Talk:Plasma-facing material
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Importance
[edit]I'd like to rate the importance of this article, but can't see any guidance at Wikipedia:WikiProject Energy/Assessment.
As the article itself says, the PFM is one of the key challenges facing fusion power research internationally. The problem is twofold... making the stuff work at all is hard enough, but so far only five elements have been suggested and/or actually tried: carbon, boron, beryllium, tungsten, and molybdenum. That is, all proposed materials, whether single or multi layer, consist entirely of one or more of these five elements. Unfortunately, all of them produce nasty radioactive waste, some more than others. It is not just a matter of allowing a few hours or days for the induced radioactivity to subside to negligible levels, as it was with the air in the heat-exchanger room of HIFAR or in the discharge stacks of the Windscale piles (under normal operation!). Instead it seems inevitable that there will be some high-level waste produced, breaking one of the key promises made by fusion power advocates.
And even if this is not enough, none of the materials yet tested have shown enough resistance to the neutron flux to make fusion power economical. Either they need replacement too often, or they are too expensive, or they contaminate the plasma too much, or two or three of these.
So the topic is of top importance. Does that mean the article should be rated this highly? I'm hesitant at putting such a rating on an article of which I still seem to be principle author. Andrewa (talk) 20:33, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
Particular materials
[edit]It would be good to add subsections of Plasma-facing material#Proposed materials briefly listing the pros and cons of each, after the existing section which would then serve as an introduction, or perhaps expanding the latter parts of it. The existing refs probably contain enough material to at least start this. Andrewa (talk) 21:22, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
Busted link
[edit]One of the refs is busted, but it was archived see
and so the ref should be adjusted... not quite sure how to do this. Andrewa (talk) 21:07, 14 September 2014 (UTC)